Walgreens to close by next week

Thursday

The city’s sole downtown pharmacy and general merchandise store will close next week — possibly as early as Monday — according to more than one employee, all of whom declined to be identified.

For Walgreens on Broadway, the dream is over.

The city’s sole downtown pharmacy and general merchandise store will close next week — possibly as early as Monday — according to more than one employee, all of whom declined to be identified.

The store at 40 Broadway, which opened in 1996, is the only business being forced to vacate the premises, as a direct result of the planned construction of a new $70 million district court complex scheduled to open in 2010.

The store’s pharmacy department, on the other hand, will survive to see another day.
According to employees (who spoke in person and on the phone Wednesday), the company is relocating the pharmacy as early as Monday into a previously vacant space in a strip mall near the intersection of Tremont and Washington streets.

Formerly known as Denmarks Home Medical Equipment, the small storefront at 5 Tremont St. has been undergoing extensive interior renovations. A construction worker there yesterday said he expected a Walgreens sign will be erected before the end of the week.
The Denmarks store closed in late May.

The message sign in front of Walgreens Wednesday advertised discounts from 50 to 75 percent as part of “Final Days Before We Move” — and a message taped to the automatic entrance and exit door suggested that customers visit other Walgreens locations in Easton, Norton, Lakeville or Stoughton.

The shelves inside the Taunton store yesterday, meanwhile, were roughly half-filled with merchandise. One employee there said the company had offered non-pharmaceutical Taunton workers the option of transferring to other locations.

The home office of the Illinois-based company has been tight-lipped for more than a year regarding the possibility of finding an alternate property in Taunton, and this week was no exception: Phone calls to Walgreens spokesperson Carol Hively were not returned.

And although it’s been well publicized that the courthouse project would entail Walgreens closing, many people on Broadway yesterday were taken aback to learn that it was closing so soon.

“It’s horrible. I get a lot of my prescriptions here,” said Cherie Aguiar.

Aguiar, 57, lives downtown on Main Street within walking distance of the store. She said she she’s been getting medicine for the past few years at Walgreens, since undergoing treatment and surgery related to problems she’s had with her heart and knees.

“I’ve gotten a lot of medicine there,” Aguiar said. “Everyone in the pharmacy has been very nice.”

She said she doesn’t own a car and doesn’t feels capable of making the walk back and forth to Tremont Street.

“I’ll have to get a ride with someone,” Aguiar said.

She added that she feels badly in particular for senior citizens living nearby who have relied on Walgreens’ pharmacy being downtown.

North Bristol County Registry of Deeds register Barry Amaral, whose office is located just behind the Walgreens parking lot, called the closing “very unfortunate.”

“I’m definitely going to miss the convenience, and a lot of seniors who walked there are going to have to find transportation,” Amaral said.

“I hope they relocate somewhere in the downtown area,” he said of the drug store chain.

Kevin Flanigan, deputy director of the Division of Capital Asset Management (DCAM), the state agency responsible for the courthouse project, said Walgreens and DCAM had previously agreed on Oct. 15 as a deadline for vacating the premises.

The next step, he said, is to conduct tests on the building site and then proceed to demolishing the building.

“It should start by the end of the year, depending on the weather,” Flanigan said.

Completion of demolition, he said, should be by next spring, “if not sooner.”

“There’s no precise sequence yet,” said Flanigan, who added that “We’re still working with the construction manager and designer.”

He explained that because the CM, or construction manager at risk, is in a position to bid the job out “in pieces,” it will allow for portions of the project to begin before others, andthus increase overall efficiency.

“We can start certain things early [so that] we don’t have to wait for the entire plan,” Flanigan said.

Dick Shafer, Taunton’s economic development director, said losing Walgreens will be unfortunate.
“It’s been great having a pharmacy and other services downtown, and I hope someday they’ll be here again,” Shafer said.

Years before Walgreens designed and constructed its building at the corner of Broadway and Pleasant Street a number of other businesses thrived there as well.

Among those were Store 24, an independent hamburger restaurant and before that the Park Theater movie house.

“I’m sad to see them go,” Shafer said. “But I’m glad the courthouse is coming in too.”

cwinokoor@tauntongazette.com

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